- Why men write YA was (supposed) to be on the table in this week's yalitchat, but the conversation turned to talking about "boy books." Bookish Blather takes issue with some of the discussion, including the way the genders are arbitrarily separated when it comes to MG and YA novels, as well as the continued school of thought that boy = standard and girl = deviation.

- The discussion over whether agents should handle their clients' self-publishing endeavors continued this week with a post by Dystel & Goderich, addressing some concerns and questions regarding the venture. The Writer Beware blog responds with further concerns about potential conflicts.

Great YA highway post, as always. Your weekly summaries are incredibly useful, informative and interesting :) Will Gurdon ever really see why the YA community responded so explosively to her article, and realise that YA is so much more diverse than the narrow well of "darkness" she portrays it to be, so stereotypically in her article, and stop claiming that the "trend" in YA is for books with increasingly darker content? As a teenager myself, I can testify to the contrary; it's a genre that is expanding in all directions, exploring and experiementing in order to offer a wider choice now than ever. Personally, I think that the diversity in YA literature is one of its strongest and best features, and I wish Gurdon would acknowledge this, rather than categorically deny that YA is anything other than "ever-more-appalling offerings for adolescent readers".

The Amazon article was really interesting. I don't think that much about it. We don't have any big chains in Barbados. And in Japan, only big chains have English books. So in both cases, the decision is made for me.

Amazon really works for me, because Kindle makes stuff available instantly in another hemisphere with no shipping fees. But if I'm ever in a country with chains and indies, I'll be going Indie.